DeWitt: War on drugs has benefited unions

Midway into his second term as President of the United States, ex-Democrat and union president Ronald Reagan, declared more militant policies in the War on Drugs. He said that “drugs were menacing our society” and promised to fight for drug-free schools and workplaces. He expanded drug treatment, beefed up law enforcement and drug interdiction efforts and created greater public awareness.

On Oct. 27, 1986, Reagan signed a drug enforcement bill that budgeted $1.7 billion dollars to fund the War on Drugs and specified a mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses.

Now $80 billion is spent per year and climbing. Despite the exponential growth in spending on the drug war, illicit drugs are cheaper and purer than they were three decades ago, and continue to be readily available.

With so much money, trillions of dollars, having been wasted on a war that cannot be won, who really profits from drug prohibition? Organized Crime and drug trafficking is a $1 trillion per year industry, equaling 8 percent of world trade. By empowering organized criminals with enormous profits, prohibition stimulates violence, corrupts governments at all levels, and erodes community order.

Worst of all, it has only served to fuel the growth of bureaucratic government departments, such as the departments of corrections, justice, and law enforcement.

The expansion of the “War on Drugs” is just another liberal policy meant only to grow the size and scope of government at every level.

Speaking of Organized Crime, the SEIU and Teamsters have expanded their union memberships throughout government, reaping the rewards of the ever increasing tax dollars committed to wage the war on drugs. The war on drugs’ only accomplishments have been to deploy drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every door and convert a once free republic to that of a perverse police state.

The tools we have given government to fight drugs have become the very weapons they’re using to enslave us. Historically, once governments have been infested by public sector unions little good has ever come of it.

Most have suffered more than their share of death and destruction throughout recorded history. It was known as Fascism in Italy, and Nazism in Germany. It’s always the citizens that suffer and are made to pay the ultimate price when unionized government runs amuck. Do we really want to repeat history and allow America’s unions to continue forming up our own government agencies into the Gestapo, Sturmtroopen and Nazis? So much for liberty.

Lets legalize hemp and thus end the Nazification of America. Let us take the profits away that benefit the unions, government and criminals. Let freedom ring.

Lorne DeWitt is a retired Investment Analyst who lives in Brooksville. Reach him at notchkids@juno.com.